Friday, 3 October 2008

What about the manifesto?

We seem to have hit a bit of an information hiatus around the reshuffle. That could be because of a hitch over somebody's new job (or one of those moments when an unfortunate minister gets left out of the junior ranks by mistake) or just be due to external events or the PM's diary.

Several unanswered questions and unconfirmed rumours remain. Perhaps the most important for the Labour Party is what Ed Miliband's new climate change and energy role means for the party manifesto, which he had been coordinating.

Indeed, one reason for the younger Miliband brother's rising popularity has been the quietly effective way he has been getting around the party to try to open up the rather opaque process to a broader range of inputs - and injecting more of a sense of a Labour mission into the debate.

Will he combine that with a major departmental role? Or will the policy coordination now go to somebody else.

Now I'm not saying that its more important than climate change. But, politically. its pretty crucial to the party's future.